World Stage Design (WSD ) opens in Sharjah on October 18th. WSD is the first and only designer-based exhibition to showcase and celebrate performance design from individual designers. Held every four years, WSD has now travelled to five cities: Toronto, Seoul, Cardiff, Taipei, & Calgary. The sixth WSD exhibition will be held in Sharjah, UAE from Saturday 18th – Saturday 25th October 2025. World Stage Design 2025 is co-produced by Sharjah Performing Arts Academy and OISTAT.
Live Performance designers from Australia and New Zealand are heading over to WSD to represent themselves and the region. In the lead up to this quadrennial, SCENOLAB has been hosting virtual talks focused on this global celebration of performance design, architecture and technology. ScenoLab is a national collaborative network for researchers and educators in performance design, architecture, interior and spatial design, and performance technologies. Their aim is to bring together the growing body of Australian researchers specialising in scenography and performance design. The 45minute conversations with designers are posted on their website and give the viewer interesting backstories to the range of work going.
ScenoLab Talks 2025 #1 – held on June 26th 2025: Meet the World Stage Design Project Director – Jacqui George
In this first talk, WSD’25 Project Director Jacqui George describes how WSD’25 has been created in the MENA region and shares the range of ways in which Australian designers can become engaged with this conference and festival.
ScenoLab Talks 2025 #2 – held on July 25th 2025: Meet the Artists of World Stage Design – ReAction Theatre
Director Louise Howlett, Designer Simon Curlis and Lighting Designer Aron Murray discuss their inter-disciplinary design perspectives used to create ReAction Theatre’s Secret of the Raft, before it heads to WSD 2025 SCENOFEST exhibition.
ScenoLab Talks 2025 #3 – held on August 25th 2025: Meet the Artists of World Stage Design – Meg Rollandi, Roger Alsop and Imogen Ross
Hear from NZ designer Meg Rollandi about her design for Gravity & Grace , a finalist in the WSD Professional Exhibition ‘Performance Design’ category, for her intermedial space of memory, interiority and 90s nostalgia. Melbourne-based sound designer Roger Alsop discusses his workshop Sound as Scene – Sustainably Creating Place and Emotion. Imogen Ross and Paula Martins outline their curation process for the Green Conversation Café – an openair space held in the evenings outside the conference centre for open flow design conversations about the different shifts towards international sustainable theatre making.
